Why though? It’s not like they need the money in the short term. They have almost $200 billion in cash. For the majority of Google’s departments the need for employees isn’t tied to demand.

Google desperately needs to find another money printer, and ostensibly they staffed up to help them do it. That hasn’t changed, and Google‘s workload won’t drop noticeably in a recession outside of a few departments.

And even in the those departments, they have so much still growing cash on hand, that they’d probably be better off to weather the storm the lay off only to rehire in a year.